Frampton defeats Cazares

By Boxing News - 04/04/2014 - Comments

frampton34By Scott Gilfoid: As I expected, Carl Frampton (18-0, 13 KO’s) defeated 35-year-old Hugo Fidel Cazares (40-8-2, 27 KO’s) in a disappointing 2nd round TKO on Friday night in their WBC super bantamweight title eliminator bout at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

Frampton knocked down the past his prime Cazares with a left hook to the head that put him down on one knee. Cazares, who is from Mexico, seemed to lose track of the count and was counted out. Cazares was grinning at the time, and seemed to think he had time to get up to beat the count. It looked like Cazares couldn’t understand the count that was being given by the Scottish referee Victor Loughlin. It could be that his accent was too thick and that made it difficult for Cazares to understand the numbers that were being called out by the referee.

The stoppage appeared to be partly result of a cramp that Cazares suffered moments before. Cazares was hurt from a cramp, and the referee appeared to be pushing him to start fighting instead of letting him recover. I would have liked to have seen the referee Victor Loughlin counting in Spanish rather than English, because Cazares might not have been able to understand what he was saying.

The crowd hated the stoppage and booed like crazy, understandably. The fans wanted to see an exciting fight, but instead they saw another controversial stoppage.

The WBC had the 35-year-old Cazares ranked No.1 by their organization despite the fact that he wasn’t even ranked in then top 15 by the other three sanctioning bodies, and you have to wonder why the WBC had the old timer ranked so highly. Having Cazares ranked ahead of more relevant contenders like Andres Gutierrez, Victor Terrazas and Vic Darchinyan seemed incredibly odd to me.

I knew as soon as this fight was made that Frampton was going to win because Cazares isn’t in the same class as the other top contenders in the division in my view. The WBC’s ranking was an upside down one as far as I’m concerned, because I saw Cazares at No.25 in the division, and I’m being very generous here because I think he’s honestly closer to No.30.

With this win Frampton will now be challenging WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz next.

“I hope it can happen here, but we’re willing to travel to America,” said Frampton’s manager Barry McGuigan.

I hate to say it but with the controversy surrounding this fight there’s no way that Leo Santa Cruz will come to Belfast to fight Frampton. You can pretty much forget that. Why would Santa Cruz want to put himself in the position where there’s some kind of controversial stoppage again.

Frampton will have major problems trying to beat Santa Cruz, because he’s actually young and can still fight. He’s not some older guy who was given a very generous ranking by the WBC like Cazares was.



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